Tag: fibre art

Opus Daily Practice day 6. The prompt to create work was “repetition”. This is my comfort zone. Repetitive patterns and repetitive shapes in the drawing (still in progress). Repetitive movement in the re-spinning of scrap yarn (eternally in progress!).

A new opportunity has arisen and I am pretty excited about it. The Frame It Store in Red Deer, Alberta (Canada) has added a new gallery to their venue, and my Wine Wraps and Bottle Sweaters will be for sale in this new space.

Both items dress up your bottle while keeping the contents cool. All are hand dyed in natural dyes and hand knit. The wool is 100% Canadian produced wool and milled in Alberta.

The new gallery space, “A Maker’s Emporium”, is having its grand opening this Thursday. If you are in town, come and check it out. It’s great to see new things happening in Red Deer’s creative community.

The Coffee Press Sweaters for Woods on Pender (Pender Island, BC, Canada) are complete. The sweaters will be dressing the coffee presses (and keeping coffee warm) in the accommodation units at the newest resort on the island.

Studio product photography (Hunter Photographics, Red Deer, Alberta)

Each Coffee Press Sweater is made of 100% Canadian produced wool that is milled in Alberta. The wool is hand-dyed in micro batches in natural dyes that I craft by hand. In keeping with the resort’s colors, the items feature colors created with marigold (right from our gardens), chamomile, pomegranate, turmeric and indigo. The Coffee Press Sweaters are knit by hand and proudly display the resort’s logo in the center band .

In addition to creating custom Coffee Press Sweaters for boutiques and the hospitality industry, we are always thrilled to sell our lovely handmade items to individuals. If you are interested in a Coffee Press Sweater we can be contacted through our website www.debra-hunter.com.

We also profile our work at www.handmade-canada.com , a brand new site for Canadian artists, artisans, writers, musicians and growers. If you are a Canadian maker, please take a look as we are currently looking for new makers to join our project.

Well we’ve been having fun for the last few days toying with Instagram, and fun it has been. It seems to be a fun and fast way to share what we are up to, especially works in progress. The latest Instagram entry will now show along the sidebar. You can also find us by clicking HERE. I hope you’ll follow us!

(Also if you are a Canadian artist, artisan, writer, musician or grower, you might want to check out the new project we are building. Our project is Handmade in Canada and can be found at www.handmade-canada.com .)

“Remnants” is finally finished. This fibre art piece, started in late October or early November has been a journey. Originally it was to be a small lino cut skull printed on naturally dyed fabric and then embellished by beads. As I worked on the piece the idea grew to a larger piece that incorporated eco printed fabric ( the leaf imprints), took on a landscape concept, and relied on hand stitching to create the image. The idea of beading was completely abandoned; too fancy for this piece.

This piece has a roughness about it. Raw edges. Rough fabric. Lopi tacked down. Fabrics dyed with marigold and tansy; dyes from the earth. It is a rugged piece, rugged like the prairies. Inspired by farms down dirt roads with skulls tacked on fences and adorning sheds, the bits left behind, and remnants of the past.

A brand new pair of fingerless mitts has just been completed. The mitts are made of 100% Canadian produced wool that has been hand dyed in natural dyes (marigold and madder).

Four color stranded knitting makes for lively patterning and a bit of fun.

These fingerless mitts give an almost full thumb coverage, plus coverage to the beginning of the fingernails allowing for maximum warmth while still having fingertips available for texting or using a camera.

The past week has been great for knitting and crochet. I am working on some new home items plus building up a supply of Coffee Sweaters for either the next order or perhaps to finally get a shop up on-line, one of the goals for 2015.

Last night I finished “The Star Money”, a piece based on the Grimm’s Fairy Tale of the same name. The base of hand-dyed silk is embroidered with cotton and silk threads (again hand-dyed) and glass seed beads. In viewing the piece in person in shimmers as the light hits the piece due to the glass beads and the texture of the silk.

I think it is interesting to interpret a folk tale using folk techniques. Originally these tales would have been shared in homes in a day where cloth was stitched by hand, just as this piece was.

It is a whimsical piece with the homespun feel of the folk tale.

I suspect this could be a theme I may continue with, after all I have 210 Grimm’s Fairy Tales to choose from.

“Grain Elevator and Tansy” is my most recent fibre art piece to complete.

Grain elevators are a classic Alberta scene, however many are disappearing as they age and cities and towns expand. It was nice to acknowledge these giants of the prairies using age old stitching, dyeing and beading methods.

This piece consists of hand dyed cotton, dyed in natural hand crafted dyes of marigold, cutch and madder. The piece is then detailed with hand stitching and hand beading. The stitching threads of cotton, wool and silk are also colored with natural dyes. If you look closely there are some pale yellow threads in the stitching dyed from tansy collected from ditches in Alberta and then turned into dye. Truly a home grown piece.

Three days of indigo dyeing means new colors are about to appear in my knit items and stitched art pieces. Here is a preview of what is to come:

cotton dyed in indigo

This skein of yarn, which is approximately a half a kilometer in length, I have plans to knit into an infinity scarf.

wool dyed in indigo

The wool yarn is slated to become coffee sweaters and perhaps a new item or two that are in the planning stages.

cotton gauze dyed in indigo

This scarf is nice and wide and long. It looks fabulous wrapped so I think I will be keeping it for myself. I will definitely be dyeing more scarves in the very near future. I also dyed a few pieces of cotton in a similar style to mix with block printing. Interesting projects to come in the future.

If you are interested in seeing how this was done you can click HERE . The process is pretty interesting.

The latest fibre art piece is completed after an ambitious and labor intensive 2 months. This is the largest piece I have tackled to date measuring in at 32 inches by 40 inches. The fabrics and threads have all been hand-dyed in hand crafted natural dyes. Cutch, lac, madder, pomegranate, logwood and tansy are the plant-based materials that bring the color to the piece. Thousands of glass beads add the light and sparkle to this Alberta landscape. Unfortunately an internet picture can’t convey the scale, it is really a piece that makes you stop and look (and touch…….the beading is really cool to touch!).

Here are a few of the details:

sun

trees

river and dead trees

island

river

more trees

Working large definitely has its challenges, from the amount of time the piece takes, to finding a work space that works for stitching, plus finding a mounting method that works. The bigger piece definitely does provide more visual impact than the smaller pieces I have done. It was a great experience to work large and it is something I will do again.